As Twitter enters 2014 as a publicly owned company, much of its strategy for generating profit will centre on being the “second screen” app of choice – that is, being the place people go to to chat and read about major events as they unfold, either in real life or, most often, on television.

This theory was evident in 2013, with armchair sports fans causing eight of the 10 biggest “tweet surges” in the UK.

Glee’s Lea Michele had the year’s most retweeted post

With the exception of Andy Murray’s tennis triumph, all were about football.

“Football dominated the most-tweeted-about moments in terms of tweets-per-second,” said Lewis Wiltshire, head of media partnerships at Twitter UK.

“The natural way you react when you see a great goal is to grab your phone.”

Abusive tweets

Excited chatter aside, Twitter’s year will also be remembered for less positive reasons.

“Trolling” on the platform is on the rise, police say, while high-profile instances of bullying also made the headlines.

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Stella Creasy and Toby Young debate how best to deal with Twitter trolls

MP Stella Creasy was among those who received death threats and sexually explicit abuse on Twitter. Others, like academic Mary Beard, were sent bomb threats.

“There are more than 500 million tweets a day on Twitter,” said Mr Wiltshire.

“The overwhelming number are positive. There’ll always be one or two people want to highlight.”